'The red is the blood of the brave.'
The red garments of cardinals, and especially their red hats, are supposed to betoken their readiness to spill their blood for Jesus Christ.
Red is the color of undeveloped ideas. It is the hue which most quickly attracts the attention of children and savages. All barbarous nations admire red; many savages paint their faces vermilion before entering battle, to which they look forward as the means of attaining enviable position in their tribe; for with barbarians physical prowess is the only superiority.
Some animals are excited to madness by the sight of this color. The bull and the turkey take it as a signal of defiance, which they rush to meet. 'Come, if you dare,' they read it, and impetuously hasten to the onset.
When the bloody Jeffreys was in his bloodiest humor, he wore into court a red cap, which was the sure death warrant of those about to be tried.
The death garment of Charlotte Corday was a red chemise—fit emblem of the ungovernable instincts, the wild rioting in blood of that reign of terror.
Christ was crucified in a scarlet robe, and in that color of love and perfection, perfected his offering of love for mankind.
YELLOW.
Anciently symbolized the sun, the goodness of God, marriage, faith, and fruitfulness. Old paintings of St. Peter represent him in a yellow mantle. The Venuses were clothed in saffron-colored tunics; Roman brides of an early day wore a veil of an orange tinge, called the flameum, a flame—a flame which, kindled at Hymen's torch, it is to be hoped was ever burning, never consuming. As every good has its antipodal evil, so every color has its bad sense, which is contrary or opposite to its first or good signification.
In a bad sense, yellow means inconstancy, and the æsthetic Greeks, fully carrying out this meaning, compelled their public courtesans to distinguish themselves by mantles of saffron color. The radical sense of saffron is to fail, to be hollow, to be exhausted. In tracing customs, it is easy to see the bias unknowingly received from natural significations, significations which take their rise in the spiritual world. The San Benito or auto-da-fe dress of the Spanish Inquisition was yellow, blazoned with a flaming cross; and, as a mark of contempt for the race, the Jews of Catholic Spain were condemned to wear a yellow cap. Distinguishing colors in dress have ever been one of the most common methods of expressing distinction of class and differences of faith, until thence has arisen the imperative adage: 'Show your colors;' and he who refuses to do so is despised as a hypocrite or changeling.